ASA Forum for public discussion and debate

Defending Against Misuses of Data
on Race and Ethnicity

As we move toward the 2010 Census
and as ethnic
or racial groups continue
to be targets of federal, state, and local
authorities, I believe it is time to revisit
the adequacy of ASA efforts to protect
against the misuse of racial and ethnic data
gathered as part of sociological and related
research. The ASA has a special responsibility
to be alert to and strenuously discourage
any such misuses given that we, as a professional
organization, have a very clear and
strong public policy statement stressing the
importance of collecting racial identifiers
for research purposes, The Importance of
Collecting Data and Doing Social Scientific
Research on Race (http://www2.asanet.org/media/asa_race_statement.pdf).

Both the 2003 ASA policy document
on race data and the ASA Code of Ethics
would seem to be logical places for equally
strong statements on the misuse of race (or
ethnic) data for group or individual targeting
purposes. While both documents refer
to the importance of data confidentiality,
neither explicitly addresses nor discourages
sociologists from participating in or assisting
efforts at racial and ethnic targeting.

Press accounts detail various law
enforcement and intelligence agencies in
the United States that use data mining
and similar technologies involving census
and other demographic data for targeting
purposes. Clearly, this is not an imaginary
threat. Moreover, recent research has
established that targeting directed against
Japanese Americans using microdata from
the 1940 Census took place and that similar
efforts directed against other groups have
apparently continued (see W. Seltzer and
M. Anderson and S. El Badry and D. W.
Swanson). It should be understood that
targeting is not a scientific research tool but
one used in intelligence and police work.

Therefore, I urge the ASA to begin to
address these abuses more explicitly. One
way to do so would be to add something
like the following to the ASA Code of Ethics:

Research involving race or ethnicity
should be conducted in a manner that
neither uses these concepts to demean the
group(s) studied nor is designed to use
these concepts as proxies for undesirable
traits or an inclination toward criminal
behavior. In no case will ASA members
assist in using race/ethnicity classifications
to target individuals or population
subgroups for human rights abuses.

Of course, this text goes somewhat
beyond targeting to cover research aimed
at racial and ethnic stereotyping of the kind
seen in the hate mongering that frequently
precedes human rights abuses and, in the
extreme, genocide (see H. Fein and A.
Oberschall).

Given the proactive stance the ASA has
taken on the value of collecting data on
race and ethnicity, it is incumbent on us
to be equally proactive in discouraging the
misuse of such data. This discouragement
should be explicit in our Code of Ethics.

William Seltzer, Fordham University

References

El Badry, S. and D. W. Swanson. 2007. Providing
census tabulations to government security
agencies in the United States: The case of Arab
Americans. Government Information Quarterly24(2):47087.

Seltzer, W. and M. Anderson. 2007. Census
Confidentiality under the Second War Powers
Act (1942-1947). Presented at the Population
Association of America, March 30, 2007, New
York www.uwm.edu/~margo/govstat/integrity.htm.

Rejoinder to Professor Persell

One of the objections that Caroline
Persell raised to my Footnotes article, AP or
Not AP: That Is the Question (December
2007), is that there isnt enough empirical
evidence to inform sociologists decisions
about how to improve high school sociology
courses. Specifically, she wants to see
as we all dorecent, representative data.
Thanks to the ASAs Teaching Enhancement
Fund, I recently completed a survey of a
nationally representative sample of 1,000
high schools. As I reported in my original
article, less than 40 percent of traditional
high schools nationwide offer a sociology
course. Given my citation of this ongoing
research, I was surprised to read Persells
suggestion that How widely sociology is
taught in U.S. high schools is an important
empirical question on which we need valid
and reliable data based on a representative
national sample. My studywhich, again,
I cited in my articleprovides the answer
to exactly that question.

Persells second observation is that
my argument is just plain wrong. She
cites psychology as a discipline in which,
once it instituted an advanced placement
(AP) course, teachers appear[ed] and/or
bec[a]me qualified. This is a fairly popular
claim that has no basis in the type of
empirical research that Persell rightly calls
for. Indeed, one might ask: How exactly do
teachers suddenly appear and/or become
qualified? The short answer is they dont
(Ernst and Petrossian 1996).

Persell correctly argues that sociologists
need to discuss strategies for improving
high school courses and for increasing
the ASAs involvement in them. But two
counterpoints must be raised. The first is
that Persell seems suddenly to agree with
me.